Surfing their site, it didn't take long to discover close to a dozen People's Cube images and parodies by me and other Cubists from several years back, translated into Polish.

Since my grandfather was Polish, we had a Polish dictionary and a language manual in the family library. Polish is also close enough to my native Russian and Ukrainian, so with some practice I was able to read Polish magazines, which were more interesting than the Soviet ones.

As a kid, I loved the Polish satirical magazine Szpilki. It wasn't widely available and their cartoons were often a lot more sexually charged than those in the Soviet print media, so my parents tried to keep them out of my sight. But seeing just one issue was enough to make me wonder why such things didn't exist in the Soviet Union.

It was possibly then that I first experienced adult thoughts about the existence of censorship. Seeing those magazines today wouldn't probably impress me that much, but at the time they turned me into a thoughtcriminal. I realized that a world without censorship was more fun to live in.

Granted, Poland was a reluctant Soviet satellite with heavily censored press. And yet Polish movies and books seemed more honest and revealing in just about anything, from sex to politics. Apparently the Poles enjoyed a little less censorship and a little more freedom than we in the USSR did. It was logical to conclude that if a little less censorship meant a little more fun, a world without any censorship whatsoever would be a blast. And that world existed just west of Poland - in Europe, America, and the rest of what we call Western societies.

Ever since I imagined a world without censorship, I wanted to live in it. My own country began to feel less like the Motherland and more like an obstacle to freedom. As a teenager, whenever the Motherland's embrace felt especially stifling and cold, I stayed warm thinking about parts of the world where people were free. I imagined I was one of them and it made me feel better. These people could speak their mind without the fear of being overheard. They could write and read books, make and watch movies, play and listen to the music without government's permission. They gave me hope.

The sounds of the Beatles and other rock and roll music of the 1970s also helped. Turning on the tape recorder provided an instant immersion into that free world, a temporary escape from the stuffy Soviet reality. I believe that was a common experience for many young people of the Eastern Bloc. Owning an overpriced pair of blue jeans and listening to Western music went way beyond mere aesthetics; it was a non-verbal expression of our longing for freedom and an analgesic relief from the daily ideological bullying and brainwashing by the Communist regime.

It felt as though all those uncensored cartoons, music, and blue fade-out apparel were made especially for us. Communist propagandists agreed, telling us that all those "Western things" were masterminded by capitalist propagandists with the sole purpose of subverting the Soviet youth and weakening our communist resolve. We laughed at their paranoia, and yet the feeling of some secret messaging addressed to us was inescapable. Living in a totalitarian society will do that to you.

Everything the Communists did had a special political purpose, and they projected the same on their "capitalist adversaries," claiming that all those "Western things" were part of a clandestine anti-Soviet operation.

Later it came almost as a revelation to many Soviets that it wasn't so. The superior consumer goods were the natural outcome of the capitalist economy, the uncensored art was the outcome of freedom, and rock and roll was a scream of joy that resulted from it. Whatever political messaging the Soviets attached to those things would have most likely surprised their creators.

As for me, I just wanted to experience a world where things were appreciated merely for their beauty, without any political weight clinging to them after they'd been dragged through the garbage of false totalitarian narratives.

Then I finally came to live in the U.S. and discovered a country chained by political correctness, which has become America's new zeitgeist.

Censorship came not as much from the government as from the media denouncements, which were then universally repeated by the mindless adepts of "progressivism."

Wherever I look I see a never-ending buildup of false narratives in an increasingly unfree society, where few things remain to be enjoyed for their beauty without the political ball and chain attached to them. One can't even buy a chicken sandwich or watch a TV show, let alone read the news, without thinking about political messaging, symbolism, or ulterior motives.

The perpetrator is, once again, leftist ideology. It may not be a replica of the Soviet ideology, but it is nonetheless aligned with the general delusional idea of a world-wide socialist Utopia achieved through a totalitarian rule of "benevolent" elites.

And now the totalitarian leftists are teaming up with the totalitarian Islamists. The censorship in Western societies has redoubled since Islam came into play. Apparently the leftists are hoping that Islamic supremacism will quietly go away once it helps them to silence the world. That is, of course, yet another dangerous delusion.

The Islamic version of censorship is blasphemy law. It means that any criticism or mocking of Islam or Muslims, even if it's based on solid facts, constitutes blasphemy, which in Islam is punishable by death. Not all "offenders" get killed, but the charge does put a target on their backs and opens a hunting season on them. It's quite revealing that the most prominent cases of such "censorship murders" involve the slaying of cartoonists worldwide.

The leftists routinely stage spectacular tearful vigils and hold signs that say "Je suis [insert the next victim's name]," after which they declare that "this has nothing to do with Islam" and proceed with an even stricter compliance with Islamic blasphemy laws by curtailing free speech through self-censorship and self-policing. They blacklist us, deny us access to mainstream channels, filter us in search engines, and block our accounts on social media. And when we dare bypass their censorship and hang our "blasphemous" posters behind their backs, they throw us in jail.

I was arrested for doing exactly that, not in Brezhnev's Moscow, but just outside Washington, DC, in the final months of Obama's presidency.

I hate politics as much as a soldier hates the war but continues to fight because it's the only way to victory. I'd rather live my life enjoying beautiful things without any politics attached, but today that seems like an impossible dream. The alternative to fighting is a surrender to the stifling totalitarianism and censorship, which will be a lot worse than going back to the Soviet days. The West's surrender to the leftist agenda means that there will be no other parts of the world left to give us the hope of freedom. Nowhere to smuggle uncensored books, tapes, or cartoons from. Nowhere to run to.

This is why I do what I do. And this is what also drives the people in the far-away Warsaw to do what they do, including the translation of the People's Cube satires into Polish.

Having grown up in an unfree world, we know something that most Americans don't.

* * * The illustrations come from the wonderful Polish cartoonist Andrzej Krauze, who started his career in the satirical magazine Szpilki that had impressed me so much as a kid.

... Poles enjoyed a little less censorship and a little more freedom ...How true. Comrades, who knew/knows that saying? : Poland and Hungary (Czechoslovakia often added) ‒ the funniest barracks in the Soviet Lagyer.

Now, I read Red Square’s lines. And I’m dumbstruck (yeah, happens easily to a dumbkopf ;-) . Red Square’s pic is, in structure, so similar to mine. There is a delta ‒ in time (say, a decade+) and in space (roughly 1.000 miles), details differ. But structure ‒ similar.

... It was possibly then ['60s turning to '70s, ah?] that I first experienced adult thoughts about the existence of censorship ...My caesura was 1956, definitely. A tragic year ‒ June : Poznań uprising with several dozen shot dead, October : Hungarian Revolution, several thousands dead. Intuition whispered in my mind that this was wrong, such world was evil. My parents hunched over the (wooden) radio, trying to block out the Oooo-Oooo-Oooo of the jammers, to catch sound shreds of Radio Freies Europa.

’56 remained a wound in the collective [sic] psyche, yet there also was some change (along the "thaw", proclaimed by Nikita "we will bury you" Khrushchev in the mid-50s).

New figures at the "top" in "Warsaw". A new weekly appeared, writing somewhat openly about wrongs in the country. Soon, filmmakers eked out ‒ or were "permitted" ‒ to speak a new language ; a short period of rough, straight talking Neorealism followed. The (yeah, the) cultural weekly (think Soviet Orbit, Polish Edition pendant of The New Yorker) printed each week a piece of modern painting. Jezus, Maria! ‒ Kandinsky! Klee! Braque! (never seen before, was "degenerate art", like in the III. Reich). Within 2-3 years, much of that has been again muffled, suppressed, stomped out. But a part survived, in the niche for "educated intelligentsia" (as opposed to inteligencja z awansu, "intelligentsia status via nomenklatura").

... Polish magazines, which were more interesting than the Soviet ones ...yeah... in the early '60s, Poland was even further : bigger cities had a "KMPiK (Club of International Press and Book)". They had, indeed, "leading organs" of the Eastern bloc, plus some Western ones, to read in situ ‒ available to everyone. Also paperbacks in English, German, French. The latter were a sensation in Russia ‒ a Polish friend of mine studied in Moscow, and mended his finances with a load of such paperbacks on each Poland-to-Russia tour.

... Szpilki ... seeing just one issue was enough to make me wonder why such things didn't exist in the Soviet Union ...yeah, the Russians had Крокодил = Krokodil , the Czechs & Slovaks Dikobraz = Porcupine, and the Polish had Szpilki = Needles.

µ-flash : As soon as Hungary was beaten down mid-November ’56, Dikobraz published Dohralis (You have outplayed, The game is over), a cartoon showing Imre Nagy (leader of the uprising, later executed) and Cardinal Mindszenty (supported the upheaval, was granted asylum in the US Embassy in Budapest) and the military leader of the revolt (executed, too) as a sunken string trio, strings torn. And Szpilki answered to Dikobraz, in protest, with an open letter in very sharp tone, condemning their tin-ear derailment.

... It was possibly then that I first experienced adult thoughts about the existence of censorship ...yep ‒ getting "triggered", Soviet Orbit Edition.

... Seeing those magazines today wouldn't probably impress me that much, but at the time they turned me into a thoughtcriminal ...o lordie ‒ my AMERYKA epiphany... (see below).

... Owning an overpriced pair of blue jeans and ...aw geez, (I was in Russia several times, in the '70s, Soviet era ; you know ‒ conferences, symposia (no, not exactly on Marxism-Leninism)), and it was always the same, in the streets ‒ every now and then, a : pshhh, do you have dzhinsy [to sell]? ochki? maknamara? (sunglasses? McNamara-style? ‒ it was Vietnam time, those copter-pilot glasses, Ray-Ban, you know).

... yet the feeling of some secret messaging addressed to us was inescapable ...again ‒ the fluids, the radiance, the vibrations emanating ‒ in my case ‒ from AMERYKA (below).

> AMERYKA

With the "change" (how repulsive that word has become since 2008...) following ’56, the Polish sector of the Iron Curtain got some cracks.

Of course ‒ this we know now, and could intuit then ‒ there was help from the West involved (from Germany, in particular). And of course it was not "neutral", disinterested. (Same thing as with Hungary post-’56, Czechoslovakia post-’68, and Romania at the begin of "era" Ceauşescu in '67 ; or Ukraine, these days.)

Anyway, soon and direct effects included i. a. (1) aged German people in the ex-German territories (Silesia first, and next Pomerania and now-Polish part of East Prussia) were suddenly permitted to leave, to West Germany (which paid a per capita "ransom"), and (2) some cultural exchange started.

Direct impact : (1) my dear Grampa said also jetzt rrraus, and dear Granny followed, in tears, and (2) a monthly AMERYKA appeared (issued by U.S. Gov.), certainly as a part of cultural exchange, itself likely a component of some "comprehensive" aid agreement.

That AMERYKA was available in the KMPiKs (Clubs of International Press and Book, mentioned above). And there was also some kinda informal "subscription", typical Soviet Orbit style. You (e. g. my Mom) were a "client" of the nearest-to-you "kiosk", the (BigGov owned) newsstand, and you had good relations with its (BigGov paid) kiosk-man (K). Now, K might have had good relations with some (BigGov paid) dispatcher (D) who had influence on which & how many (BigGov printed) newspapers are distributed to kiosks in his, D’s, competence sector. And D might have had influence enough to get monthly an exemplar of (US Gov issued) AMERYKA to be distributed by D, according to his ability and according to D’s sector needs. And so it was possible, that the pyramidal net US Gov → Poland → Dispatchers → Kiosk-Operators landed, via said D and K, a freshly baked exemplar of AMERYKA in the hands of my Mom, to our family’s full satisfaction and my bulging eyes delight. Also K was happy ‒ got a little subsidy from Mom ‒ and sure as hell K made also D happy, same procedure. (That scheme, btw, was applicable to anything of scarcity ‒ and of course near everything was scarce.)

So, AMERYKA. We ‒ kids ‒ were of course, via education [I will not call it Edookayshn ‒ after all, we had neither half-analphabets in 3rd class, nor math-analphabets in the 7th], of strictly anti-American "stance" (Truman! Dulles! Bomb!). It was fun, on May 1st ‒ the parade ‒ to see a 10 ft high stiff Uncle Sam, wielding his black bomb, but I can’t remember anybody ‒ adult ‒ really scared & "hatin’", and kids had anyway other things in minds.

And then ‒ the insight into some other America, as given in AMERYKA, of Eisenhower era.

Exotically glossy, it presented a very down-to-earth view. No bombast whatsoever, no strutting. Life of a farmer family... A day in a school, somewhere in the boonies... Workers on a car assembly line... Scenes from big cities... Dinosaur excavation... Recreation... People having fun... Kids goofing around... And all stories as sober photo reportage, plus factual text.

Photography ‒ that I noticed years later ‒ was end-to-end 1A. That specific documentary style (evolved during the Great Depression), and technically flawless. But there was more : each issue presented also American art.

Photography, painting, architecture, dance, theatre, you name it. Much of that dovetailed with my own orientations and extra-school search & learning in those years. In hindsight, I ‒ teenie ‒ got a lot of good impulses from there, and certainly some cultural, uh, polishing.

Yet most important ‒ my respect for America, the great country, no doubt initially dawned on me via that glossy friend, AMERYKA. Over the years, knowledge added, horizons widened, and foot set on the New Continent, that basis from teen years evolved into a deep sympathy. (you say, love? ok, love.)

Are the People going to get quotas adjusted to observe these back to back show trials?

Beets are going to be sitting in the fields growing weeds if everybody stops to listen to the proceedings on the crystal radios that may or may not exist in the toolbox at the back of the tractor barn.

Someone on Facebook asked me about the tape recorder I used to play music on in the 1970s. It was made-in-Ukraine Dnipro 14A. Not big on treble, but with a very warm, pleasant sound, probably due to its wooden resonator.

The tapes used to jam, tear, and get all kinky, so I spent a lot of time patching them with electrical tape. I also had to clean the head frequently with a solvent to remove ferrous deposits from the aging tapes. I had a collection of about 100 reels, some in a better shape than others, and gave them all to a friend when I moved to Siberia in 1983.

Dnipro = (ukr) Днiпро = (ru) Днепр = (en) Dnieper , korrekt?Correct, Dnieper is one of the biggest rivers in Europe, it runs through the middle of Ukraine, I grew up only a couple of short blocks away from the beach, and spent my summers swimming in its waters. In the winter it usually froze and then we would go ice-skating (once I almost fell through the melting ice, that was pretty scary).

Someone on Facebook asked me about the tape recorder I used to play music on in the 1970s. It was made-in-Ukraine Dnipro 14A. Not big on treble, but with a very warm, pleasant sound, probably due to its wooden resonator.

The tapes used to jam, tear, and get all kinky, so I spent a lot of time patching them with electrical tape. I also had to clean the head frequently with a solvent to remove ferrous deposits from the aging tapes. I had a collection of about 100 reels, some in a better shape than others, and gave them all to a friend when I moved to Siberia in 1983.

I'd rather live my life enjoying beautiful things without any politics attached, but today that seems like an impossible dream.And now Hollywood had to ruin Star Wars for me as well, by politicising the upcoming episode.

On Nov. 11, Rogue One writer Chris Weitz launched a barrage of anti-Donald Trump tweets that mirrored what many in Hollywood had posted on social media in the wake of the presidential election.

But several messages took the crusade further, injecting the new Star Wars film into a divisive political debate: "Please note that the Empire is a white supremacist (human) organization," wrote Weitz. Added fellow Rogue One scribe Gary Whitta, "Opposed by a multicultural group led by brave women." Both men changed their avatars to a Rebel insignia with a safety pin, a reference to the symbol of solidarity with persecuted groups that has spread following the election.

It seems that Darth Vader has just bought the Star Wars franchise, switched the narrative, and cast the rebels as white supremacists.

How about this suggestion for a rewrite:

Chancellor Palpatine (smiling darkly): "Why fight the rebels if I can simply hire Democrat strategists to call them Nazis on CNN? And then I win the election."

I'd rather live my life enjoying beautiful things without any politics attached, but today that seems like an impossible dream.And now Hollywood had to ruin Star Wars for me as well, by politicising the upcoming episode.

On Nov. 11, Rogue One writer Chris Weitz launched a barrage of anti-Donald Trump tweets that mirrored what many in Hollywood had posted on social media in the wake of the presidential election.

But several messages took the crusade further, injecting the new Star Wars film into a divisive political debate: "Please note that the Empire is a white supremacist (human) organization," wrote Weitz. Added fellow Rogue One scribe Gary Whitta, "Opposed by a multicultural group led by brave women." Both men changed their avatars to a Rebel insignia with a safety pin, a reference to the symbol of solidarity with persecuted groups that has spread following the election.

It seems that Darth Vader has just bought the Star Wars franchise, switched the narrative, and cast the rebels as white supremacists.

How about this suggestion for a rewrite:

Chancellor Palpatine (smiling darkly): "Why fight the rebels if I can simply hire Democrat strategists to call them Nazis on CNN? And then I win the election."

For what it's worth, the last one (first one under Disney's wing) was apparently pushing the marxist feminist angle pretty hard. I wouldn't know, I've never watched a single Star Wars flick and don't intend to do so anytime soon.

Oleg Atbashian, the gifted satirist and artist who founded The People’s Cube, has written a classic essay that deserves the widest possible circulation. How I Became a Thoughtcriminal is a personal account of growing up in the Soviet Union and discovering censorship, leaving it behind, and rediscovering it here. This is chapter one of the story:

[ QUOTE SKIPPED ]

And thus was born a lifelong fighter for freedom of thought. What makes Oleg’s journey so compelling is that he shows us though his own experience that what he thought he left behind is in fact flourishing here.

My dad had a "hi-fi" system that included TWO reel to reel decks, one was a Sony, the other was an Akai. He had over six feet of shelving with 8" reel to reel tapes of POLKA music, each tape capable of several hours of music recorded at slow speed, but better resolution came with faster recording at the cost of shorter recording time. He also had similar shelving for albums, 33 and 78 RPM's, yes, all polka. My mother hated (past and present) polka music...So does his current wife.

Ivan the Stakhanovets - my reel tape recorder also had two speeds: Speed 4 and Speed 8. And it was MONO, not stereo. The slower speed allowed for a lot more stuff to be recorded at lower quality, but it was fun to play it at Speed 8.

The tapes were of three types.

Type 10 (black) was thinner, more flexible, more durable, and more expensive. Type 6 (brown) was thicker, more rigid, with shorter lifespan, and prone to get ripped when suddenly pulled or jammed. Type 2 (lighter brown) may as well be made of construction paper, required constant patching, and was the cheapest.

My friends and I used to copy each other's tapes. That required two tape recorders hooked together, and that was the main reason to own a portable model you could carry around with you when visiting a friend. Music copied that way was usually of a lower quality. Some of my recordings were 5th or 6th generation copies, and it was hard to make out the words or some of the instruments. I remember recently hearing an old song from my collection on FM radio in the car, and I thought to myself, "I never knew this song had a piano in it!"

Some guys would make money by recording multiple tapes from smuggled LPs and selling them on the black market for about 5 rubles more than the cost of the blank tape. Those were called first-generation recordings. A friend would buy a new Pink Floyd tape, for example, and then a bunch of us would get some tape recorders together and copy that tape to our tapes. It took as much time to make one recording as it took to listen to the entire tape. When multiple tapes were involved, the procedure would often turn into a long music appreciation party, sometimes with beer, as we listened to the new music being recorded and exchanged our opinions of it, talked about the latest news and rumors from the music world (often ridiculously fake), and made up jokes about it.

Black market vinyl LPs were expensive - about 40 or 60 rubles on average depending on the condition, year, band, etc. That was almost half of my dad's monthly salary. Some people owned pretty large LP collections, but they were usually also active on the black market and made money that way. They also took higher risks, as the black market was regularly raided by the police who could confiscate or destroy the "illegal" stuff they found on you.

Speaking of Polkas, my friend and I once made a humorous composition titled "The Polka of Texas Collective Farmers." He played a Polka on my piano and I accompanied it with a guitar solo that was mostly made of blue notes.

Here's a drawing I made back then, of us sitting in my apartment by the piano, and then I re-imagined it as if we were hanging out with John Lennon and Paul McCartney - drinking, smoking, wearing slippers, being casual and somewhat bored.

I also made this drawing when I tried to imagine a situation where Sergeant Pepper was a Soviet policeman sent to our local park to harass black marketers and break their vinyl records, and he had four dedicated rookies to help him on that mission.

That old tape deck is a very nice looking piece of furniture, Red Square. For my part I dream of owning a J-Corder. The new modern tape emulsions are so sweet. But the local Party here is not amused at shelling out ten-thousand and then a couple hundred for each new tape no matter how much the greater good of all such a thing is.

I'm sorry, but I can't read this because it lacks a government seal of approval. According to the just-passed Murphy-Portman "Countering Propaganda and Disinformation Act", this might contain "a false narrative that undermines democratic institutions". Unless it is vetted by the proper authorities, I might find myself the victim of "fake news", written by a journalist who has not yet received the "training for journalists" (as authorized by the Act). And just like I heed the government cancer warnings put on cigarettes, I think I should also heed the government warning on news articles.

So our Department of Visual Agitation has made you this seal, comrade! This article is FCC-certified real genuine truthful news!

... POLKA music ... [each tape] several hours ...... and there sure were dozens such tapes, along the 6 ft shelf of POLKA Safe Space™. ... 33 and 78 RPM's, yuck yuck yuck . . . and all POLKA! [laughs madly, rolls on the floor]

Ivan the Stakhanovets

Young beet sprouts today have no idea...(as, in reverso, old beet tubers - possibly - have no idea of what's-their-name, iThis, iThat...)

BUT : There is also this travel-in-time aspect : the time/space spot, Red Square wrote about, was likely already equipped with boob tubes (made by ZiL or whoever, and day in, day out drooling agitprop - in a style that you still find in Pyongyang, these days).

Whereas in the time/space bit I referred to above ('50s), there was - aside from being locked up behind the Iron Curtain - even no TV yet. The only visual windows to the world were (1) stuff printed on "dead wood", and (2) Kino! [= Cinema] - of course, restricted to what the State Apparatus deemed palatable for "the masses".

(I swear to Marx & Lenin, Kino was - along with AMERYKA - another Big Chapter. But that's another story - enough to say, on the verge of the '50s/'60s we even got first glimpses into the Cinema of "the Enemy" ; vivid memory : the sensation of Ostatnia walka Apacza (Apache, Burt Lancaster).)*

And back to .Young beet sprouts today. : can you imagine, how they (mostly) can't imagine the life in time/space spots like the two mentioned above?

*later - University time - there was a bottom-up "Club" way to get movies for one-time screenings - American first, and foremost classics, directly from Embassies (no fee). The Film Club was for everyone, not just students - you bought a month-ticket, 4 screenings, price bearable. (the money went to rent a - Big Gov owned, what else - cinema hall for one evening, and to pay the passionate guy, truly a "one-man show", who organized all that - contacts, film reels, room.) (all that for sure had a "silent" permit, and the "one-man" was likely on some "culture" subsidy.)

P.S.

Ivan the Stakhanovets

... My mother hated (past and present) polka music...So does his current wife ...oh, I can feel their pain... (progressively compassionate as I - toiling Comrade - am, and further also a bit overfed with POLKA-MAZURKA ‒ a fixed item, along with "Ukrainian dances"* ‒ of the część artystyczna of every świąteczna akademia (the closing "artistic part (declamations & dances, on stage)" of any "festive celebration" - think yearly anniversary of October Revolution, May 1st, ...).

* by a quirk of "internationalism" = the "multiculturalism" of the Soviet Orbit of yore.

P.S. There is a remarkable ‒ very universal ‒ aspect in this, the non-for-profit "Magnit-transfer" :

Scarcity ‒ pervasive, everyday's scarcity, but still bearable, not the current Venezuelan variant ‒ evokes a specific basic-level solidarity and produces interpersonal bonds/exchanges that would otherwise not arise/exist.

People in line talk ‒ exchange hints (you know, yesterday there were socks in Socks Palace etc.), transparently allude to, uh, the Greatness of Further Progress (Marx forbid any explicit talk, you don't know who else is in the очередь ‒ or who your informal-talk partner is etc.), and also, huh, collectively keep order in queue, etc. ‒ you can write a book on that.

If some "valuable" (say, cucumbers, or maybe even kielbasa) is "thrown on the market" (yeah, original Soviet Orbit lingo, a paragon of "transmission" arrogance), such news spread woman-to-woman like fire in straw. Effect : huge run on People's Palace Of Cucumbers, or the Cooperative Kielbasa Center etc., nice thick queue, and so people talk ‒ spontaneous bonds, exchanges, you see.

Or you get wind of a friend's friend, who just so grabbed The Dark Side of The Moon ‒ well, then... That aspect gets reduced and lost when scarcity vanishes, and abundance takes place. Ask ex-GDR Krauts. (indeed, anybody who underwent such a transition).

There is a dark side of that aspect, of course ‒ a very dark side :

(1) corruption, down to a most elementary level, is immediate ‒ whoever has a role in "distributing" goods ("nylons, washing machines", tape recorders, down to vender of said kielbasa), he has a lever in his hand (to monetize it or/and to use its "availability" as an exchange token) ; further : doing (any) "business" by greasing becomes the norm.

(2) that "mainly cooperative" attitude goes only until a ‒ hard to pin down ‒ breaking point ; a "Venezuelan" level of scarcity spawns the homo homini lupus trait ‒ lurking since hundreds of millennia right under the thin varnish of arduously, over those millennia acquired culture...

Dnipro = (ukr) Днiпро = (ru) Днепр = (en) Dnieper , korrekt?Correct, Dnieper is one of the biggest rivers in Europe, it runs through the middle of Ukraine, I grew up only a couple of short blocks away from the beach, and spent my summers swimming in its waters. In the winter it usually froze and then we would go ice-skating (once I almost fell through the melting ice, that was pretty scary).huh! see? Global Warming!!!

The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology. ~ Ayn Rand

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